Opportunities In the Multisite Church Model
This is Part III of my examination of the Multisite 09 Conference.
Introduction
Part I: What Makes A Church A Church?
Part II Team Ministry
1. Prevents Rushed Organization
The multisite/multicongregational (MSMC) model gives church plants the room to extended their organization time, to what is necessary for their given situation.
Doug Swagerty brought up the point that in many church planting situations church planters are on a tight schedule to become self supporting and self governing, in the PCA this means having locally elected elders. The MSMC model tries to remove the situation where a church would rush to elect people that should not be elders at that church. This seems to allows for a less forced and more organic organization, with tested leaders who rise to the surface.
2. Team Ministry
As addressed in my previous post, I think the most prevalent form of ministry in the Bible is team ministry, and harbor leaves room for alot of team ministry.
3. Creates More Intimate Meeting with The Resources of a Larger Meeting
Most of Harbors sites are between 80 and 120 which means that, like many small churches people, feel more connected to everyone. There is also less need for very formal communication structures (an issue that City Reformed is wrestling with).
At the same time there is the ability to gather resources to do larger projects and impact more areas at the same time.
4.Better Avenues for Leadership
In most larger, or well established, churches there is a long road that needs to be taken to move from new member to leader, and there are fewer openings into leadership. On the other hand this longer process means that leaders have the time to be better equipped, and there is more time to test their skills. In a small church, or a church plant. The road is much shorter and there are more openings into leadership but the trust that can only be built up over a period of time is often negatively effected.
Harbors model takes the best of both paradigms. It allows for many openings but also creates a space where senior leaders can be slowly brought on board.
5.Resource Sharing
In Harbor’s model, they share what they call central services, this includes things such as printing, insurance, tax info, and many of the other administrative things that take up so much of a pastors time.
6. Accountability In Relationship
Maybe one of the most interesting opportunities that Harbor affords is the ability for there to be more accountability between people who know each very well. While many presbyteries on paper are meant to operate like this, when people only meet 5 or 6 times a year it takes many years for any deep relationships to develop. And as Dick Kaufmann pointed out most presbyteries see themselves as court first and church second.